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It’s got to be hard to live up to the magic of a franchise home opener, but the Toronto Nationals came as close as they could.

Zach Greer scored four goals and assisted on another as the Long Island Lizards defeated the Toronto Nationals 13-9 in front of over 3,000 fans on a soggy BMO Field Friday night.

The Lizards (2-1) scored five of the final six goals of the game to put this one away.

The Nationals (2-1) were without leading scorer Merrick Thomson and could only get nine past Lizards goalie Brian Dougherty, the Major League Lacrosse (MLL) leading stopper, with a 10.46 goals against average.

“Every time Merrick has the ball the defence has to respect him and slide to him,” Nationals attacker Stephen Hoar said.

“When we don`t have Merrick in the line up it hurts but we have a lot of depth and we have to find away when he`s not playing to be able to win.”

Scoring the other goals for the Nationals were Jordan Hall, Colin Doyle, Athan Iannucci, Joe Walters (2) Delby Powless (2) and Hoar (2).

The Nationals held a slim 3-2 lead after one.

With 7:12 remaining in the second quarter, Toronto moved ahead 6-4 on a goal by Hoar but three goals in 1:43, capped off by Greer?s first professional goal, gave the Lizards a 7-6 lead.

With 1:37 left in the second quarter the sky opened and the rain blew sideways across the field.

Following a 30-minute delay the game restarted.

At the end of three quarters the Lizards led 10-9 and expanded it to 11-9 with over six minutes remaining in the final quarter. They walked away with their second road win of the year.

“We were just pretty sloppy at both ends of the field,” Toronto head coach Dave Huntley said. “We just weren?t very disciplined defensively or offensively and I think we were our own worst enemy tonight.”

Sid Smith played in his first MLL game, following a two-year career at Syracuse University. He looked solid in his NLL debut and wasn’t too overwhelmed in his first professional game.

“I just came out and had fun,” Smith said. “There’s been a lot of pressure lately in the NCAA and it was good to come out and play hard and have fun.”

“I thought he (Smith) was terrific,” Huntley said. “He did everything we asked of him and I think he’s going to be a terrific player for us in this league.”

Rob Scherr made eight saves on 15 shots in his 30 minutes of action before Brett Queener replaced him to start the second half. Queener (2-1) stopped eight of 13 shots in the loss.